A new poll in Georgia finds that Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) is 4 points ahead of his Republican opponent, former NFL running back Herschel Walker, in their runoff election contest scheduled for December 6.
The two candidates will square off in a rematch of their midterm contest earlier this month. Georgia law requires candidates to attain a majority of votes in order to win an election. Although Warnock defeated Walker by nearly 40,000 votes, the Democrat did not reach the 50 percent-plus-one-vote threshold needed to remain in office.
No other candidates will be on the runoff ballot.
In the new poll — conducted by survey companies Fabrizio Ward and Impact Research and commissioned by the AARP of Georgia — Warnock appears likely to retain his Senate seat if he maintains his current 51 percent of support versus Walker’s 47 percent.
The poll, which was conducted from November 11-17, also found that a majority of voters (51 percent) viewed Warnock favorably. Conversely, a plurality of respondents in the poll (49 percent) said they viewed Walker unfavorably, with only 45 percent holding him in a favorable view.
The poll was conducted before many recent and unusual comments from Walker, in which he rambled on about fictional supernatural characters last week on the campaign trail.
Walker described vampires as “some cool people” but added that he wouldn’t want to be one.
“Let me tell you something that I found out: A werewolf can kill a vampire,” Walker said. “Did you know that? I never knew that. So, I don’t want to be a vampire anymore. I want to be a werewolf.”
The comments from Walker were a tangent from his attempt to compare Warnock’s time in the Senate to a scary movie. Walker’s words went viral on social media.
While comical to some observers, Walker’s quirky commentaries that have baffled many are outshined by more alarming and worrisome behavior over the past several months.
Walker, for example, has refused to answer basic questions about his policy stances when asked about them by journalists.
“Have you asked my opponent? Don’t play games,” Walker coldly said to local journalists asking him what he’d do if elected as senator.
In other instances, Walker has presented contradictory policy positions. An anti-abortion candidate, Walker said in October that he was supportive of exceptions to the procedure when a pregnant person’s life was endangered — but just two months prior, he said he was opposed to such exceptions.
At a debate that was scheduled in October but which Walker refused to attend, Warnock said that the Republican wasn’t prepared to be a lawmaker representing Georgia at the federal level. Walker’s “nonsensical answers” on myriad questions, including his history of domestic violence, “shows he is not ready,” Warnock said at the event.
Warnock reiterated this belief in a tweet on Tuesday.
“I have spent my life serving the public,” Warnock said. “Meanwhile, my opponent has demonstrated that he’s not ready to serve or represent the people of Georgia.”
